Obama Minimum Wage Order Likely To Impact Just 3 Percent Of Federal Contractors

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Obama Minimum Wage Order Likely To Impact Just 3 Percent Of Federal Contractors

Thus, any federal panel or lower court would have to uphold the 1996 decision, said Hans Bader, senior attorney for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank. However, Bader noted that Obama’s recent appointees to the D.C. appeals court could move it left if the matter came before the court again.

“It goes from being of dubious legality to flagrant illegality if it is imposed on company employees not working on federal contracts, merely because other employees in the same company are working on federal contracts,” Bader told TheBlazee.

Bader said there would be no constitutional questions if Congress passed such a policy, but executive action raises questions.

“But precisely because it is Congress’s power to do such things, not the president’s, the president’s doing so raises separation-of-powers concerns,” Bader told TheBlaze. “It is legally questionable in this case, since the president does not have the power to just piss away taxpayers money under the Procurement Act, and since Congress has not passed a minimum wage increase.”

“The President’s unilateral increase in the minimum wage for federal contractors is at odds with the statutory values of economy and efficiency embodied in the Procurement Act, and thus is of dubious legality,” Bader added. “Such increases are obviously not economically necessary, especially since lower wages are permitted by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets the minimum wage.”

The executive order violates the Service Contract Act, Hans Bader, senior attorney for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank. The Service Contract Act requires the Labor Secretary is required to determine what the prevailing local wage is for a given service, and workers must then be paid that wage; the federal minimum wage; or the wage set by a collective bargaining agreement, whichever is highest.